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bayern
Metal newbie

Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2006 10:11 pm
Posts: 150
Location: Bulgaria
PostPosted: Sun Oct 08, 2017 2:32 am 
 

By the way, mentioning Noktorn time and again here and elsewhere, I wonder what happened to the guy? I used to read, and still do, his reviews with great interest, his more concrete, less dogmatic ones...

dystopia4, he's looking at you now: you've mentioned these "Blake Judd shenanigans", but what exactly is the story behind this? If it's not a secret, of course... Thanks.

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BastardHead
Worse than Stalin

Joined: Thu Aug 18, 2005 7:53 pm
Posts: 10857
Location: Oswego, Illinois
PostPosted: Sun Oct 08, 2017 3:54 am 
 

The Noktorn saga has been told to death but I imagine the frequency with which he's namedropped might make the exact story hard to search for, so I'll tell it again.

Short version: He put up his entire record collection for sale, people swept in to claim as much as they could (a friend of mine sent him something insane like $200), some people got what they ordered, most people didn't, he went completely dark and nobody could reach him as if he just vanished into the ether.

Longer version: The reason he put up his entire collection was ostensibly because, if I'm remembering correctly, his parents were moving out and selling the house and had no plans to take him with, so he was suddenly on the verge of homelessness and needed as much money as he could. Unfortunately, he was also fighting with a really bad smack addiction at the time (which explains some of his more esoteric and rambling self centered nonsense reviews, and he claims there's a huge chunk of them that he wrote while he was so fucked up he doesn't even remember writing them) which led to the ultimate bad decision of just taking the money and running. Some superhuman sleuths somehow found a blog or something entailing his parents' travels and realized that there was a pic of him in there, in full Army regalia, somewhere in Germany. Turns out once he hit rock bottom (after stealing everybody's money) he joined the military as a last ditch effort to clean himself up and get his life on track. It seems to have worked out for him since he's indeed alive and stationed somewhere in Europe. Once his current status became known, he popped into a thread on RYM and gave a short apology for what he did and explained what I did above. He claims he kept no records of that whole fiasco so he has no idea who ordered what but if anybody who got ripped off wanted to contact him he'd try to "make it square". I don't know if anybody ever took him up on his offer there but ever since that post he's gone back to total radio silence. If he's around in any capacity he's done a good job of keeping incognito.
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bayern
Metal newbie

Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2006 10:11 pm
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 08, 2017 6:17 am 
 

Fuckin' hell, man; had no idea about this saga; none whatsoever...

Wow. Well, under these circumstances one shouldn't be surprised why a large portion of the fanbase here, and I'm sure elsewhere as well, have largely lost their respect for the man, to put it mildly. He was probably looking to achieve some kind of a cult status, having in mind his self-centred persona... I don't know.

Thanks a lot for this interesting piece of information. Have never come across it previously...

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hakarl
Metel fraek

Joined: Sat Sep 29, 2007 1:41 pm
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Location: Finland
PostPosted: Sun Oct 08, 2017 7:50 am 
 

There was also an echo chamber of similar self-absorbed, elitist critique at the time. Most of the people involved in that particular circle-jerk have been gone for years. It was simply a paradigm in the m-a review dialectics, and nowadays we roll our eyes at that kind of nonsense. It's certainly very telling that a key character in that phase ended up fucking everyone over and disappearing.
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bayern
Metal newbie

Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2006 10:11 pm
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Location: Bulgaria
PostPosted: Sun Oct 08, 2017 8:22 am 
 

Yep, true... But you could never envisage such a nefarious scenario, could you? Cause I guess we all have this inherent trust in the fellow metal head, with us being one big family and all. And I'm pretty sure the man was well aware of that having used it to his utmost advantage...

Which is sad indeed cause cases like that only tarnish the reputation of the metal fanbase.

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hells_unicorn
Veteran

Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2005 8:32 pm
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 08, 2017 1:00 pm 
 

bayern wrote:
Fuckin' hell, man; had no idea about this saga; none whatsoever...

Wow. Well, under these circumstances one shouldn't be surprised why a large portion of the fanbase here, and I'm sure elsewhere as well, have largely lost their respect for the man, to put it mildly. He was probably looking to achieve some kind of a cult status, having in mind his self-centred persona... I don't know.

Thanks a lot for this interesting piece of information. Have never come across it previously...


I wasn't fully up on this saga myself and only had a few occasional interactions with him outside of the context of being an unofficial rival during review challenges for a while. Some of his work did open me up to cutting my teeth on various brutal and grind bands, as well as introduce me to Jungle Rot, who are among my favorite straightforward death metal bands, but I think a lot of people here who weren't geared towards the really extreme end of the metal spectrum viewed him more as a curiosity than a cult figure. A lot of his material came off as a bit cryptic to me, especially his desire to rewrite history by reassigning early OSDM works by Death and Possessed as thrash metal albums, in a very dismissive tone as well. I had on a few occasions joked about him being high when writing some of his reviews, but didn't quite consider that it might actually be the explanation for the strange little world he'd go into when writing.
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Empyreal
The Final Frontier

Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2006 6:58 pm
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 08, 2017 2:19 pm 
 

Ilwhyan wrote:
There was also an echo chamber of similar self-absorbed, elitist critique at the time. Most of the people involved in that particular circle-jerk have been gone for years. It was simply a paradigm in the m-a review dialectics, and nowadays we roll our eyes at that kind of nonsense. It's certainly very telling that a key character in that phase ended up fucking everyone over and disappearing.


Ah yeah, the old 'black metal is the only true form of metal and any deviations from orthodoxy = poser pussy sell out crap, might as well be Britney Spears radio pop, there's absolutely no difference' days. I don't miss it. I missed out on a lot of great music when I was in high school because I read so much of that stuff and didn't realize how elitist and image-obsessed that kind of mindset really was back then.
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bayern
Metal newbie

Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2006 10:11 pm
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Location: Bulgaria
PostPosted: Sun Oct 08, 2017 11:57 pm 
 

[/quote]I wasn't fully up on this saga myself and only had a few occasional interactions with him outside of the context of being an unofficial rival during review challenges for a while. Some of his work did open me up to cutting my teeth on various brutal and grind bands, as well as introduce me to Jungle Rot, who are among my favorite straightforward death metal bands, but I think a lot of people here who weren't geared towards the really extreme end of the metal spectrum viewed him more as a curiosity than a cult figure. A lot of his material came off as a bit cryptic to me, especially his desire to rewrite history by reassigning early OSDM works by Death and Possessed as thrash metal albums, in a very dismissive tone as well. I had on a few occasions joked about him being high when writing some of his reviews, but didn't quite consider that it might actually be the explanation for the strange little world he'd go into when writing.[/quote]

You know, this strange little world may have not been such a bad option, if you think of it; I'm sure a lot of metal heads out there would be happy to create a similar retreat for themselves, where they could take the needed break from life's petty chores, with or without (preferrably) the help of any substances...

But at the end of the day, to throw all this down the fuckin' drain... selling your entire metal collection; come on! This is a heinous act that could easily have you expelled from Hell even.

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hells_unicorn
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Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2005 8:32 pm
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 09, 2017 12:59 am 
 

bayern wrote:
You know, this strange little world may have not been such a bad option, if you think of it; I'm sure a lot of metal heads out there would be happy to create a similar retreat for themselves, where they could take the needed break from life's petty chores, with or without (preferrably) the help of any substances...

But at the end of the day, to throw all this down the fuckin' drain... selling your entire metal collection; come on! This is a heinous act that could easily have you expelled from Hell even.


It wasn't that he created a retreat, it was the kind of retreat that he created that sort of took me aback. I've got my own little world as well, it's a big part of why I'm still at it with metal music while age 40 gets closer and closer, though I get my little world from a high-functioning variation of Asperger's Syndrome rather than a bottle or syringe. Granted, I do indulge in the occasional Guinness or even a sampling from Cooley brand whiskey from County Louth to loosen things up, but I draw the line well before living at the pub and melting my own liver out of my body the way my grandfather did.

It's not the crash that is the problem, it's the high that precedes it, because you don't get the crash without it. If you can't love something without tricking your own senses into doing it with intoxicants, you're doing it wrong, in my opinion. I don't think I'd ever part with my collection, which is somewhat sizable, but I think my expulsion from Hell is pretty well assured despite that, for other reasons.

On a related note, I definitely concur that it was a good and necessary thing for that old trend of praising black metal and shitting on every other sub-genre to die. I remember one guy back in the day named IWP got so sick of it that he wrote a bunch of retaliatory negative reviews, one in particular about Transylvanian Hunger that was overly contrarian and more a polemic against the elitism of certain reviewers at the time than of the album itself.
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Acrobat
Eric Olthwaite

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 09, 2017 1:01 pm 
 

No, no, all Catholics go to hell. You must have missed something.
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OzzyApu
Metal freak

Joined: Fri Oct 13, 2006 12:11 am
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 09, 2017 10:29 pm 
 

hells_unicorn wrote:
... as well as introduce me to Jungle Rot, who are among my favorite straightforward death metal bands...

Noktorn wrote:
Jungle Rot is the most complex art, essentially the pinnacle of metal music and, indeed, human culture


I had an elitist phase. Really shut me out from listening to a lot of great bands. I even thought almost all female vocalists were garbage. Right around late 2012 I believe is when the cracks started to break my shell. Mid-2013 I stopped caring and listened to what I liked.

Kruel and Noctir reviewed from that leet mindset, too. Really lame stuff.
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hells_unicorn
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 10, 2017 12:26 am 
 

Acrobat wrote:
No, no, all Catholics go to hell. You must have missed something.


lol Actually I became a Presbyterian a little over 5 years ago, so only the Anglican Church and the Jacobites think I belong in the eternal tanning booth. :-P

OzzyApu wrote:
I had an elitist phase. Really shut me out from listening to a lot of great bands. I even thought almost all female vocalists were garbage. Right around late 2012 I believe is when the cracks started to break my shell. Mid-2013 I stopped caring and listened to what I liked.

Kruel and Noctir reviewed from that leet mindset, too. Really lame stuff.


Yeah, I remember Kruel coming off as a major douche bag in several of his reviews, didn't read too much of Noctir's stuff, but they both seemed to come off as being more ideologically inclined than musically inclined based on what I did read.
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MRmehman
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Joined: Thu Feb 12, 2015 1:34 pm
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 10, 2017 7:52 pm 
 

BastardHead wrote:
...his parents were moving out and selling the house and had no plans to take him with, so he was suddenly on the verge of homelessness and needed as much money as he could. ...he was also fighting with a really bad smack addiction at the time ...he joined the military as a last ditch effort to clean himself up and get his life on track.


Jesus, poor fucking guy. That must have been brutal on him. I can't even imagine what I'd do in a situation like that.
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Acrobat
Eric Olthwaite

Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 8:53 am
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 11, 2017 2:46 pm 
 

hells_unicorn wrote:
Acrobat wrote:
No, no, all Catholics go to hell. You must have missed something.


lol Actually I became a Presbyterian a little over 5 years ago, so only the Anglican Church and the Jacobites think I belong in the eternal tanning booth. :-P


Hell is mostly made up of Scottish people, wrong again.

Also, changing denomination? That's definitely worthy of hell's grim tyrant.
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hells_unicorn
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 11, 2017 2:54 pm 
 

Acrobat wrote:
Hell is mostly made up of Scottish people, wrong again.

Also, changing denomination? That's definitely worthy of hell's grim tyrant.


:lol: I'm sure the same would go for the Irish since they share the same basic ancestral lineage, so I won't even bother mentioning that I'm not a Covenanter by blood. If you get any more Anglo with your words on me mate, I'm going to have to start hurling muffins at you.

And yes, the old denomination was changed, in large part due to the denomination in question changing. It gets hard to call yourself an originalist when the Papacy keeps changing its freaking doctrines every decade or two. :-P
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caspian
Old Man Yells at Car Park

Joined: Tue Dec 07, 2004 11:29 pm
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 13, 2017 6:02 am 
 

On the Noktorn trying to make things square story: long story short, he owed me $1k USD before he disappeared. Then he hit me up maybe two years ago and paid the whole thing back, so I would certainly say his intentions in that regard are pure. He reached out entirely on his own accord, I'd pretty much forgotten about it.

..Due to exchange rate shenanigans turns out I got about a 40% return on the thing so it actually worked out rather well :)
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MRmehman
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 14, 2017 2:28 pm 
 

caspian wrote:
I'd pretty much forgotten about it.


You forgot about $1k?

Good of him to pay it back, especially since he had nothing to gain from it. I can't say I wouldn't take the easy option out if that were me.
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caspian
Old Man Yells at Car Park

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PostPosted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 4:01 am 
 

well, I still remembered it but was pretty over it. For three reasons:
1) I'm on the other side of the world, and would have no recourse of any sort.
2) another friend of mine at effectively the same time borrowed twice as much and I'll never be seeing that money again, as he got high on meth and went on a rampage that's put him in jail for 7 years, so this was small change
3) at that point I was earning more money than I really knew what to do with. Single and no kids at that point.

And honestly cashmoney is never something I've been too stressed about. but yeah, nice of him to pay it back.
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gasmask_colostomy
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 9:35 am 
 

This thread has taken rather a weird turn...

So to get back on track, I want to say that I'm not a fan of grimdoom's reviews, particularly his older ones from before 2010, which form the majority of his work on the site. It doesn't help that he likes a lot of the same stuff as me (guess what, it's doom, but certainly far from grim), though the proliferation of 100% scores and repetitive hyperbole really gets grating. Basically, anything he reviewed before 2009 that he liked was described as "DOOOOOM!!!!", always in capslock and with exclamation marks, while that was sometimes the whole explanation that we received.

Then there are the comments that didn't add up, such as for Paradise Lost's 'Draconian Times' (which got a 100% score), where he first claims that it isn't gothic metal but - guess what - doom, despite that album being heralded as a major step in developing gothic metal, then later cites "drawbacks" such as a lack of DM vocals, "the higher-sounding guitars", and the fact that some of the songs drag in the middle of the album. Finally, he declares that "this is more or less a masterpiece of pure, unadulterated doom metal" and signs off. What the fudge?

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tomcat_ha
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Joined: Fri Oct 27, 2006 8:05 am
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 10:32 am 
 

around that time me, caspian and FSM were at KIT in germany. Caspian had 50 euro bills scattered around inside the tent like they were pieces of paper.

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caspian
Old Man Yells at Car Park

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 4:19 am 
 

I feel like that reflects more my lack of organisation than anything else :lol:
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colin040
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2017 2:44 pm 
 

gasmask_colostomy wrote:
This thread has taken rather a weird turn...

So to get back on track, I want to say that I'm not a fan of grimdoom's reviews, particularly his older ones from before 2010, which form the majority of his work on the site. It doesn't help that he likes a lot of the same stuff as me (guess what, it's doom, but certainly far from grim), though the proliferation of 100% scores and repetitive hyperbole really gets grating. Basically, anything he reviewed before 2009 that he liked was described as "DOOOOOM!!!!", always in capslock and with exclamation marks, while that was sometimes the whole explanation that we received.

Then there are the comments that didn't add up, such as for Paradise Lost's 'Draconian Times' (which got a 100% score), where he first claims that it isn't gothic metal but - guess what - doom, despite that album being heralded as a major step in developing gothic metal, then later cites "drawbacks" such as a lack of DM vocals, "the higher-sounding guitars", and the fact that some of the songs drag in the middle of the album. Finally, he declares that "this is more or less a masterpiece of pure, unadulterated doom metal" and signs off. What the fudge?


Not a fan of his reviewing style either and his PL reviews are quite odd at times. For instance, I don't get how he gave In Requiem a 100% yet complains that the following up PL albums sounded ''too modern'', but what I find mostly annoying is his guitar - vocals - drums description which got tiring fast.

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kybernetic
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Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2007 8:48 pm
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 10:21 am 
 

BastardHead wrote:
The Noktorn saga has been told to death but I imagine the frequency with which he's namedropped might make the exact story hard to search for, so I'll tell it again.

Short version: He put up his entire record collection for sale, people swept in to claim as much as they could (a friend of mine sent him something insane like $200), some people got what they ordered, most people didn't, he went completely dark and nobody could reach him as if he just vanished into the ether.


I'm one of the ones who ordered from him back a few years ago, before he fell off the planet and into the void. I ordered a sizable amount of CDs from him, since I figured he had his own label and could generally be trusted. It turns out, in my narrow singular instance dealing with him, I was correct and he sent me everything that I ordered (11-12+ CDs), for definitely under 'market value'. There were a couple of rare ones in there too (Pungent Stench and early Jungle Rot pressings). I guess I just got lucky in that instance.

I always did wonder what happened to him, but it appears the saga is ongoing. He must have been a real pain in the ass if his parents basically were giving him the boot.
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~Guest 414160
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 19, 2017 6:07 am 
 

gasmask_colostomy wrote:
This thread has taken rather a weird turn...

So to get back on track, I want to say that I'm not a fan of grimdoom's reviews, particularly his older ones from before 2010, which form the majority of his work on the site. It doesn't help that he likes a lot of the same stuff as me (guess what, it's doom, but certainly far from grim), though the proliferation of 100% scores and repetitive hyperbole really gets grating. Basically, anything he reviewed before 2009 that he liked was described as "DOOOOOM!!!!", always in capslock and with exclamation marks, while that was sometimes the whole explanation that we received.

Then there are the comments that didn't add up, such as for Paradise Lost's 'Draconian Times' (which got a 100% score), where he first claims that it isn't gothic metal but - guess what - doom, despite that album being heralded as a major step in developing gothic metal, then later cites "drawbacks" such as a lack of DM vocals, "the higher-sounding guitars", and the fact that some of the songs drag in the middle of the album. Finally, he declares that "this is more or less a masterpiece of pure, unadulterated doom metal" and signs off. What the fudge?


On your TWNAH review–while I don't disagree with most of it, I still think that it's a 60% album

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gasmask_colostomy
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 20, 2017 1:31 am 
 

Psyche_Dome wrote:
On your TWNAH review–while I don't disagree with most of it, I still think that it's a 60% album


I guess it's sort of fun, but it's really musically lacking. I tend to punish poor Megadeth albums pretty harshly in terms of scores because their best ones are outstanding so the inconsistency bugs me a lot.

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~Guest 414160
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 20, 2017 4:59 am 
 

gasmask_colostomy wrote:
Psyche_Dome wrote:
On your TWNAH review–while I don't disagree with most of it, I still think that it's a 60% album


I guess it's sort of fun, but it's really musically lacking. I tend to punish poor Megadeth albums pretty harshly in terms of scores because their best ones are outstanding so the inconsistency bugs me a lot.


I hear that!

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Cynical
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 18, 2017 8:13 pm 
 

hells_unicorn wrote:
[...] especially his desire to rewrite history by reassigning early OSDM works by Death and Possessed as thrash metal albums, in a very dismissive tone as well.

This isn't as revisionist as you're implying -- Possessed, in particular, considered themselves a thrash metal band (their shirts of that era even had "Bay area thrash metal" on the back), and Death really didn't sound like death metal until Chris Reifert joined.
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hells_unicorn
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 18, 2017 11:10 pm 
 

Cynical wrote:
hells_unicorn wrote:
[...] especially his desire to rewrite history by reassigning early OSDM works by Death and Possessed as thrash metal albums, in a very dismissive tone as well.

This isn't as revisionist as you're implying -- Possessed, in particular, considered themselves a thrash metal band (their shirts of that era even had "Bay area thrash metal" on the back), and Death really didn't sound like death metal until Chris Reifert joined.


What Possessed considered themselves and what they sounded like are very different things, the line between Slayer and Possessed in terms of sound is kinda impossible to miss, though I will concede that given how early they were that Possessed is on the lighter side of the death/thrash spectrum. In the case of Death, completely disagreed on every level, you have to go back to the Mantas demos to get away will implying that Schuldiner's writing was in any way thrash metal. If you are going to insinuate that Leprosy is thrash metal with nastier sounding vocals, you'd have to put a significant amount of Cannibal Corpse's output in the same category.

No offense, but this whole idea that death metal has to just simply blast all day long or be as bottom heavy as Incantation or else it's thrash metal comes off as idiotic to me, and that's exactly the road that Noktorn went down with several of his reviews.
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bayern
Metal newbie

Joined: Wed Sep 13, 2006 10:11 pm
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2017 12:02 am 
 

Cynical wrote:
hells_unicorn wrote:
[...] especially his desire to rewrite history by reassigning early OSDM works by Death and Possessed as thrash metal albums, in a very dismissive tone as well.

This isn't as revisionist as you're implying -- Possessed, in particular, considered themselves a thrash metal band (their shirts of that era even had "Bay area thrash metal" on the back), and Death really didn't sound like death metal until Chris Reifert joined.



About Possessed, I agree on all counts. Possessed remained, and I'm pretty sure will always be, by-and-large a thrash metal band. Yes, there were those ominous moments on the debut that suggested at scarier things to come, that goes without saying, but they never developed them further, and quickly shook them off on subsequent releases, firmly siding with the thrash metal roster. Said moments and a song titled "Death Metal" on the debut simply wasn't enough for everyone to start shouting "death metal!" immediately... In the same train of thought you can label Scorpions or Motorhead as speed/thrash metal bands based on the more aggressive material with which they peppered their early output...

The Death case is entirely different I'm afraid; I don't consider Reifert's contribution as essential when it comes to the spawning of the death metal genre. The Mantas demos were already pretty intense, not very restrained bash to which the "thrash metal" tag simply wasn't very appropriate. Schuldiner (R.I.P.) had no choice but to call thrash in for help on "Scream Bloody Gore" in order to give a more coherent shape to his violent visions, but on "Leprosy" death metal was pretty much a standalone entity.

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Cynical
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2017 12:18 am 
 

hells_unicorn wrote:
What Possessed considered themselves and what they sounded like are very different things, the line between Slayer and Possessed in terms of sound is kinda impossible to miss, though I will concede that given how early they were that Possessed is on the lighter side of the death/thrash spectrum. In the case of Death, completely disagreed on every level, you have to go back to the Mantas demos to get away will implying that Schuldiner's writing was in any way thrash metal. If you are going to insinuate that Leprosy is thrash metal with nastier sounding vocals, you'd have to put a significant amount of Cannibal Corpse's output in the same category.

No offense, but this whole idea that death metal has to just simply blast all day long or be as bottom heavy as Incantation or else it's thrash metal comes off as idiotic to me, and that's exactly the road that Noktorn went down with several of his reviews.

Not certain where you're getting that I don't think Leprosy is death metal, given that Reifert joined Death in 1986.

TBH, I think you're overstating the difference between Slayer and Possessed; if anything, Hell Awaits has riff construction a lot more like most of death metal to follow than Seven Churches. The rougher/unmuted playing style (and vocals) marks Seven Churches as something a bit different than thrash, but in terms of note selection and overall "riff shape", something like Burning in Hell is much less like what followed than something like Necrophiliac or Hardening of the Arteries.

bayern wrote:
The Death case is entirely different I'm afraid; I don't consider Reifert's contribution as essential when it comes to the spawning of the death metal genre. The Mantas demos were already pretty intense, not very restrained bash to which the "thrash metal" tag simply wasn't very appropriate. Schuldiner (R.I.P.) had no choice but to call thrash in for help on "Scream Bloody Gore" in order to give a more coherent shape to his violent visions, but on "Leprosy" death metal was pretty much a standalone entity.

The Mantas demos were pretty much straight thrash with theatrical vocals. The Mutilation demo (their first studio recording with Reifert) is when they first became a death metal band.
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hells_unicorn
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2017 12:39 am 
 

Cynical wrote:
Not certain where you're getting that I don't think Leprosy is death metal, given that Reifert joined Death in 1986.


Misread your post, thought you were talking about Sean Reinert, though part of why that mix up occurred is because in Noktorn's "Butchered At Birth" review he basically says that everything that came out prior to Cannibal Corpse's second album (ergo prior to 1991) didn't qualify as 100% death metal, and I had that in the back of my mind when I typed my response. Noktorn was basically putting Scream Bloody Gore, Leprosy and Spiritual Healing in the thrash metal sub-genre with that statement, in fact he made an explicit dismissal of Scream Bloody Gore being death metal in his review of CC's "Eaten Back To Life".

Quote:
TBH, I think you're overstating the difference between Slayer and Possessed; if anything, Hell Awaits has riff construction a lot more like most of death metal to follow than Seven Churches. The rougher/unmuted playing style (and vocals) marks Seven Churches as something a bit different than thrash, but in terms of note selection and overall "riff shape", something like Burning in Hell is much less like what followed than something like Necrophiliac or Hardening of the Arteries.


The dissonance factor on Hell Awaits is definitely atypical, but honestly I'd put Reign In Blood as the more influential album with death metal tendencies terms of overall style, not just note selection, but also song structure, soloing style and general aesthetics. Nevertheless, my overall point wasn't necessarily to downplay Slayer's influence on death metal (which is a bit more pronounced than Possessed), but more to contradict the notion that Possessed was simply another thrash band as Noktorn tended to depict them.
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Last edited by hells_unicorn on Sun Nov 19, 2017 1:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
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bayern
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2017 12:49 am 
 

bayern wrote:
The Death case is entirely different I'm afraid; I don't consider Reifert's contribution as essential when it comes to the spawning of the death metal genre. The Mantas demos were already pretty intense, not very restrained bash to which the "thrash metal" tag simply wasn't very appropriate. Schuldiner (R.I.P.) had no choice but to call thrash in for help on "Scream Bloody Gore" in order to give a more coherent shape to his violent visions, but on "Leprosy" death metal was pretty much a standalone entity.


The Mantas demos were pretty much straight thrash with theatrical vocals. The Mutilation demo (their first studio recording with Reifert) is when they first became a death metal band.[/quote]


Thrash, and black, and speed, and something else that I'm missing here... the Mantas demos were the be-all-end-all of aggressive metal back then; that's why to put them under strictly thrash terms isn't very accurate.

The "Mutilation" demo, yes; definitely a precursor to what occurred later. I didn't know that this was the first recording with Reifert...

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bayern
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2017 1:21 am 
 

Honestly, I feel kind of guilty for raising the Noktorn question here cause out posts are drifting further and further away from what the prime purpose of this particular thread is... How about putting an end to any not related to it discussions? Sorry about that.

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pfk505
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 10:24 pm 
 

Is it bad form to give 100% for 18 out of 19 reviews, including 8 to the same obscure artist? Just curious.

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Diamhea
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 10:38 pm 
 

Arguably yes.
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TheStormIRide
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2018 5:53 pm 
 

pfk505 wrote:
Is it bad form to give 100% for 18 out of 19 reviews, including 8 to the same obscure artist? Just curious.


Just guessing this has something to do with the slew of 100%ers for a certain atmospheric black metal band being reviewed by someone with an arachnid-type user name... Comes across as rampant fanboy(girl)-ism at its worst. I've listened to most of the guy's work, and while it's all pretty good, there are varying levels of quality, which given the amount of releases the guy has, should be a no brainer.
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pfk505
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 20, 2018 12:08 am 
 

TheStormIRide wrote:
pfk505 wrote:
Is it bad form to give 100% for 18 out of 19 reviews, including 8 to the same obscure artist? Just curious.


Just guessing this has something to do with the slew of 100%ers for a certain atmospheric black metal band being reviewed by someone with an arachnid-type user name... Comes across as rampant fanboy(girl)-ism at its worst. I've listened to most of the guy's work, and while it's all pretty good, there are varying levels of quality, which given the amount of releases the guy has, should be a no brainer.


Yes, and those were my thoughts exactly.

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Subrick
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PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2018 1:23 am 
 

Trooper fucking Ed. His reviews are overly long, rambling nothings that constantly go off the rails so he can rant about styles of metal he doesn't like, loaded with absolutely insane, mind boggling logic jumps and just plain not knowing what he's talking about, musically or otherwise. Highlights include claiming Black Horizons by Dissection had a breakdown in it (turns out it was just an acoustic section), claiming Sunbather by Deafheaven is modern rock, claiming that Hammerheart is a doom metal album, claiming viking metal doesn't exist as a genre, and...well, this little gem:

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Precious Jerusalem rips off Roots Bloody Roots and rules while doing it. What do I mean by that exactly? Well, just imagine someone was showing Blind Guardian the Sepultura AIDS-sandwich-with-mustard of a track in question, and the band thought they could fix it by applying Freddy Mercury's kind of ghey instead of Robb Flynn's type of ghey.


Also, Mailman, entirely for his ludicrous Megadeth discography review series, wherein he regularly fails to describe the music adequately, spending decent chunks of reviews shitting on grunge (and anything else he doesn't like, and it seems like he only likes crappy slam bands and a few Megadeth albums), as well as writing the worst reviews of Rust in Peace, Countdown to Extinction, and Risk you'll ever read in your life.
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Sweetie
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PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2018 1:24 pm 
 

TrooperEd could be good if he would cut out all of the crap excuses to bash what he doesn't like. I dig that he puts personality into the writing, he just goes way overboard. His most recent Testament one could have completely cut out the first two overly long paragraphs. As far as Mailman, yeah, I 100% agree. I've read every one of them just for the sake of seeing what ridiculous things he had to say, and to laugh at them, honestly.
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PostPosted: Thu May 17, 2018 4:57 pm 
 

TrooperEd is not good at all. The nonsensical comparisons to other bands, the annoying writing style, the constantly reviewing only beloved classics by big bands - he should really improve.
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